Background:
I have been tasked with porting a 9.3 .NET toolbar to ArcGIS 10 / 10.1. I am a dyed in the wool Python programmer and, while digging through someone else's .Net is interesting, it isn't the most fun in the world!

Once ported I have a number of improvements that I want to implement.

The existing tool is a toolbar with 4 buttons. Each button launches a menu that accepts parameters, performs some processing* and generates output files (shapefile in GDB and text logs).

Question
Is it possible to create this same style workflow, toolbar > button > menu > run, using python add-ins? This needs to be shippable to a wide range of users (10 & 10.1) so I do not want to generate windows using WxPython (for example).

*By in large the processing is not digging into ArcObjects geoprocessing functionality that is not accessible via Python. Anything geoprocessing that is, is pretty easily recoded in pure Python.

Edit: Both posters so far have noted that the functionality I am really looking for is ArcGIS10.1. I should have noted that I realize this, but still wanted to hear some options. This should be targeted at 10.1+ (for when 10.2 rolls...)

1 Answer
1

Well, if your product needs to be deployable to 10.0, then using a Python Add-In isn't going to be an option for you, as Python Add-Ins are only available at 10.1 (which you might already know). I'm dealing with this on a project now; if I could use 10.1, life would be much easier.

How much work is it going to be to port the .NET Add-In from 9.3 to 10.x? Might not be that bad and worth your time to just do that.

Another option is to port it over to one or a series of Toolbox Tools with Python backends, but again, this might be more trouble than it's worth and more work than just porting the existing .NET code.

Looks like I'm going the .Net update route. It looks like this will be a longer term supported tool as well, so I guess I can port at my leisure as Arc opens more functionality to Python (without having to use IPython or com types gymnastics).
–
Jay LauraFeb 20 '13 at 15:01